


put a little stardust in your eyes

by kurooing



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8152973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurooing/pseuds/kurooing
Summary: Close proximity to a bookstore is convenient, especially when you work at the coffee shop inside. Close proximity to Nam Woohyun isn't, no matter the time frame. Well, so Sungyeol thinks. Present Sungyeol. All Sungyeols? Time travel is confusing. And feelings are weird.





	

"When did I ever give you the idea that I was impressed by your bullshit?" Woohyun snarks, his eyebrows raised in what Sungyeol knows is mock confusion. 

Woohyun is such an asshole. 

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Sungyeol replies, leaning over the counter closer to Woohyun's face, finger pointing to his own. He's not entirely certain what expression his sometimes uncooperative features have aligned themselves into, but he hopes it's something that at least vaguely resembles seriousness. Woohyun squints at him, before shoving Sungyeol's face back away from him. "Ayy, no need to be so rude!"

"Don't stick your face so close and I won't have reason to." Sungyeol frowns at that, and crosses his arms. "And anyway, just because you look serious doesn't mean you're not full of shit, Yeol." That's probably true, Sungyeol thinks; he's given Woohyun plenty of reasons in the past to doubt him. Part of him regrets that right now, but the bigger part remembers how much fun it'd been and regrets nothing. 

Maybe Sungyeol should reconsider his moral compass one day. Not today, though. 

"If I swear on one of these stupid books you're always going on about will you believe me then?" he asks, backing toward where he knows the display of Woohyun's favorite series permanently sits with the 'Staff Picks' label. 

"No," comes the reply, with such finality that Sungyeol startles slightly, and trips over his own feet. He lands with a soft ‘oof’ next to the table. "They don't mean anything to you so how would that convince me?" Sungyeol pouts from his spot on the floor. 

"What can I do then?" 

"Swear on _that_ ," Woohyun tells him with a slightly disconcerting smile, pointing in the direction of the café side of the store. Sungyeol follows the direction of his finger to find the espresso machine. He scrambles to his feet and rushes over to the beloved machine. 

"Nam Woohyun, you're a monster." With his arms wrapped around the espresso machine, Sungyeol hears Woohyun laugh. 

"I guess you are full of shit after all." That's when the bell on the front door jingles, and an elderly couple walk into the store. "Let me know if you change your mind, Yeol. Until then, I've got customers to take care of." Woohyun plasters on his million dollar smile, the fake one that all their customers eat up, and goes to assist them. Sungyeol huffs, and leans moodily on his counter. 

If he's being honest with himself, he doesn't think he'd believe him either if he was Woohyun. But he's Sungyeol, and this weird shit happened to him so he does believe it. Probably. There's definitely at least a 70% chance he's not losing his mind. He doesn't get the chance to think about it much more though, as the evening rush kicks in and he barely has time to remember that he's irritated with Woohyun for not taking him seriously. 

By the end of his shift, Sungyeol just wants to go home and sleep. But Myungsoo is late picking him up, so he's forced to endure more time with Woohyun.

"So when you went back in time," he says, walking over to sit next to Sungyeol on the bench outside the shop. The tone of his voice is unbearably patronizing, nothing new, but somehow more annoying than usual right now. "What did you even do? High five a dinosaur? Prevent any wars?" Sungyeol bites his tongue and doesn't look at him. A mistake, because it invites Woohyun to continue. "No? What then? I mean, if you don't even do anything cool what's the point?" 

Myungsoo chooses this exact moment to appear, before Sungyeol can snap something back at Woohyun. "What took you so long?" is all he says, standing up and walking away from the bench. 

"A POLITE PERSON WOULD AT LEAST SAY GOODBYE!" Woohyun yells at his back. Not ever having quite gotten the polite thing perfected, or really even the maturity thing, Sungyeol turns his head and sticks his tongue out. Myungsoo is too used to these sorts of behaviors and says nothing, but waves to Woohyun with a small smile. 

Once they're both in the car, Sungyeol cranks the stereo and crosses his arms, pouting. 

"What was it today?" Myungsoo asks, dialing the volume down to a reasonable level. 

Sungyeol hesitates briefly before answering, "Same as always. Woohyun's a dick." The pause doesn't escape Myungsoo's notice, unfortunately, and he spares a quick glance at his friend, before refocusing on the road. 

"It was more than that." _Why is he so damn perceptive sometimes,_ Sungyeol wonders, _and always when it’s the most inconvenient._ The idea of relating his story to someone else after Woohyun's reaction is so vastly unappealing. Myungsoo is less likely to laugh at him, he knows, but Sungyeol still isn't sure he wants to revisit it just yet. 

He needs to be positive it happened before he tells anyone else. "It's not a big deal. He was just laughing at me about something I told him. I overreacted probably." Myungsoo looks over at him again, and Sungyeol smiles this time. This appears to pacify Myungsoo for now, or at least enough to drop the subject and smile back. 

  
  
  


The next day, Sungyeol's shift starts before Woohyun's, which gives him a chance to test this time travel business in peace. He leaves an only slightly peeved Sungjong manning the café and wanders over to the bookshelf he was at yesterday. 

One good thing about working in the same building as a bookstore is that it makes Sungyeol’s abrupt and rapidly changing interests incredibly easy to manage. All he has to do is find a book or five on whatever the current one is and he’s golden. A week or so ago he caught part of some drama Myungsoo was watching - the overall plot was boring and the acting sort of awful, but that episode involved someone getting sent back in time. For what reason, Sungyeol had no idea, nor did he care. But that was all the spark he needed.

Honestly, it sort of makes his head hurt. For something that isn’t even real - or at least it shouldn’t be real (it’s _definitely_ not real) - time travel is incredibly strange. There doesn't seem to be any fixed rules or standards that any of the numerous pseudo experts can agree on, and, well, he doesn’t know what he expected. But the idea is really _cool_ , in theory, and Sungyeol spends a lot of time thinking himself in circles anyway so it’s not as though this is a stretch for him. 

The book he wants, the one that started the weirdness yesterday, is actually for children. Why a child would need an introductory guide to the theory of time travel, Sungyeol will never understand, but he figured it would be less headache-inducing than some of the other things he’d been reading lately. And he was not disappointed; it even came with a little wind-up pocket watch toy to help illustrate the points in the book. 

A toy.

Sungyeol holds the watch in his hand again, staring at it intently. Yesterday must have been a fluke, some weirdly vivid daydream he had; spacing out usually falls into Myungsoo’s territory though. Imagining what could be doesn’t hold much value for Sungyeol. He prefers to stay fixedly in the present as much as possible. If he sometimes accidentally finds himself dwelling on something in the past... well that’s why he has so many things to distract him. 

If he does the same thing he did before, and the same thing happens, then he’s not crazy. Probably. That’s how science works, right? 

For variety’s sake, this time he winds the watch forward an hour instead of back. When Sungyeol looks around, nothing appears to be different. But then he hears Woohyun’s voice from somewhere off to his left, and there’s no way he got here and started working that quickly. He peeks carefully around the corner of the aisle to look toward the cafe, not entirely sure what he’s expecting to see.

Sungyeol sees Sungjong, busy making a drink for a customer. And he sees himself, smiling stupidly and waving at him. For a split second Sungyeol thinks, _Is that really what I look like when I smile?_ before his brain kicks in and realizes what’s happening.

Then, obviously, Sungyeol shrieks. Fortunately, he somehow manages to have presence of mind enough to throw himself back between the shelves of books and clap a hand over his mouth. But he knows Woohyun must have heard him and will be coming over to see what’s going on, and he can’t see Sungyeol here when he’s also over there and _why the fuck did he wave at me like that? I_ am an asshole.

When he went back in time - because at this point, there’s no way to deny that’s what he did - Sungyeol was worried he would get stuck in some weird hour-long time loop. Like a really short and shitty version of _Groundhog Day_ where every time the hour he went back ended the current him would then go back in time again and he’d have to relive the most boring hour for eternity.

That hadn’t happened, thank god. He (by chance, just like most everything he does) wound the toy watch back to the present time and somehow that seemed to work. He was right where he was to begin with and at the exact time, too. Conveniently. 

Hopefully that will work again, because Sungyeol hears Woohyun asking if everything’s okay over here and he does not have time to think about it. He winds the time back an hour to when he left. 

No more Woohyun voice, which he would be thankful for under normal circumstances, but is even more thankful for right now. Sungyeol pulls himself off the floor and stares wide-eyed at the pocket watch in his hand. “What the hell?” he breathes out, much more quietly than he’s usually capable of managing. “This is for real, oh my god!”

“Sungyeol! Haven’t you wasted enough time back there already?” comes the gentle but definitely irritated voice of Sungjong wafting across the store. Never really feeling the need to immediately oblige Sungjong’s wishes, Sungyeol takes his time walking back to the cafe. Sungjong’s eyes follow him the entire time, and he sniffs haughtily when Sungyeol walks behind the counter next to him. “What is that?” he asks, pointing to Sungyeol’s closed hand, which he realizes now is still holding the pocket watch. Oops.

Sungyeol has three options right now:   
1) he can put the watch back with its book and leave it there, hoping no one buys it so he can continue to experiment with time travel, since that’s apparently actually happening  
2) he can put the watch back with its book and actually buy it, but that would mean Woohyun seeing him buy a kids’ book about time travel and that sounds like a miserable scenario  
3) he can just steal the watch and hope no one ever finds out about it, and honestly, how would they unless he told them?  


Sungjong is waiting for an answer, and Sungyeol is pretty committed to option three already, so he opens his hand and says, “Just something from when I was a kid.” He raises his hand for Sungjong to get a closer look at it. His gaze drops to Sungyeol’s hand and then flutters back up to his face.

“Nostalgic? _You_?”

“It happens. On occasion.” Sungjong rolls his eyes and turns away, done with Sungyeol and this conversation, which is exactly the response Sungyeol was hoping to get.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully; Sungyeol expects past him to show up at some point since he saw future him earlier, but it never happens. Weird time shenanigans of some sort, he guesses. Different timelines? Something like that, who knows. The bookstore is busier than usual, so Woohyun doesn’t even have time to be obnoxious to anyone else. When Myungsoo is actually waiting for him when he walks outside, Sungyeol thinks this is probably one of the best days he’s had in awhile. It occurs to him that this is kind of pitiful, but he’s too excited to tell Myungsoo about his discovery today to think about that right now. Knowing Myungsoo as well as he does, and not particularly keen on getting in a car wreck, Sungyeol contains himself until they get back to their apartment to reveal his secret.

“Time travel?”

“Time travel.” Myungsoo looks vaguely skeptical, like this could be some weird prank Sungyeol is playing on him for unknown reasons, but behind the doubt Sungyeol can see his eyes get that sort of sparkly look that they do when Myungsoo’s excited about something. It’s probably one of Sungyeol’s favorite things about his best friend; he looks so childlike and innocent, far from the chic handsome guy most people see. That, and his dopey smile. Sungyeol has spent years perfecting all the ways to make Myungsoo smile. “I would not shit you about something like this.”

“Can you prove it?”

Sungyeol just smirks. He’s already thought of the way.

He tells Myungsoo to look at the front of their refrigerator, where they keep a small whiteboard to (in theory) leave important notes or lists but more often than not gets used for stupid jokes or obscene doodles. “There’s nothing there.”

Sungyeol hopes his plan works, but he’s not actually sure it will, and if it doesn’t he’s going to look like a dumbass. But he smiles confidently at Myungsoo, nodding. “Right.” Taking the small watch out of his pocket, he winds it back about 15 minutes, right before the two of them arrived home. Myungsoo is no longer sitting next to him on the couch, and Sungyeol jumps up with a triumphant yell before running into the kitchen to scribble a ‘#confirmed’ on the whiteboard. When he returns to his spot on the couch, he winds forward again, and Myungsoo is once again beside him. “Look again.”

This time, Myungsoo’s eyes do the full-on wide-eyed sparkly with wonder look and Sungyeol just smiles even more brightly. “You can time travel!”

“Duh, I told you so.” They discuss the situation at length and decide to test how far into the future Sungyeol can go at once. His next test will be to aim for about five or six months forward. Go big or go home. Big compared to a few hours, at least.

  
  
  


"You're here early."

"Uhh.... yeah?"

"You never come in early."

"Well, I did today."

"Why?"

"W...h...yyyy not?"

"Well. If you were going to come in ten minutes after me I could have just brought you here myself. Since I was, after all, leaving from your apartment anyway." This has suddenly taken a turn Sungyeol did not expect. The best idea he has is to feign stupidity, that usually works. If it comes down to it he can blame lack of caffeination and an obscenely early hour. 

"You were?" 

"This is what I get for trying to be extra quiet and not wake you up while getting ready, huh? You forget I was even there at all? Or did you hit your head on something? I'm pretty sure nothing we did last night would have messed your brain up that badly, but maybe I'm wrong. There's a first time for everything." Sungyeol's eyes go saucer-wide and his mouth drops open. 

"W-w-w-what?!" he somehow manages to sputter, backing away from Woohyun and into the counter. For whatever reason, now Woohyun looks sort of hurt, which doesn't make any more sense than anything else right now so sure. Why not. Sungyeol can’t be bothered to concern himself much with that when there are clearly more pressing issues at hand. 

Woohyun takes a step closer, and Sungyeol tries to step back again but there’s nowhere he can go unless he starts climbing backwards over this counter and he knows he’s not nearly graceful enough to pull that off. All he manages is a sort of uncomfortable shuffling and having the counter edge pressing harder into his barely-existent ass, which only makes Woohyun frown. “You know, I thought,” he starts to say, but apparently thinks better of it. Or decides it’s not worth it. “Never mind. Forget it. I don’t know what I thought or what I was thinking.” And then he’s walking away and usually that would be pleasing but Sungyeol just feels some weird confusing feeling. 

The thing is though, Sungyeol has known Woohyun long enough - not as long as he’s known Myungsoo or even as long as Myungsoo has known Woohyun but still long enough - to know what his buttons are. This is information Sungyeol collects on everyone, because he loves to play with buttons. But he’s not an asshole. At least, not a supreme one; he knows where to draw the line, which buttons are the big red _do-not-push-under-any-circumstances_ buttons, and he’s always careful to avoid them. Yellow is okay, orange ones have to be pushed gently, and only if the person is in a good mood and can take a joke. Red buttons just lead to regret. A little over a year ago, Sungyeol watched Sunggyu push just a little too hard on every single one of Woohyun’s buttons, and so while some of their friends were blindsided by the breakup, Sungyeol wasn’t at all. No one likes getting their red buttons pushed, under any circumstances.

Everyone thinks Sungyeol is stupid, and he’s fine with that, mostly. But he knows things. 

He knows the look he just saw on Woohyun’s face at Sungyeol’s confusion and discomfort is scarily similar to how it looked when Sunggyu used to dig into him, and Sungyeol can’t fathom how what he said would result in such a response. He hasn’t come _that_ far into the future, how could things between them be so drastically different?

Staying in whatever warped version of reality he traveled to doesn’t seem appealing after that encounter, so Sungyeol dials back his clock to the present. Maybe he can figure out what the deal with future Woohyun is through present Woohyun?

At least, it can’t really make things worse. Probably?

  
  
  


“Hey, Woohyun! Come here!” Woohyun narrows his eyes from across the store. 

“What do you want?” What Sungyeol wants is not to yell his question across the - not particularly busy but not completely free of customers - store. He gestures wildly at Woohyun in the hopes that he’ll just come over if for no other reason than to keep Sungyeol from hurting himself. Despite his overabundance of shit, Woohyun can be weirdly caring and Sungyeol isn’t above using that to his advantage right now. “Oh my god, calm down before you break something.” That’s basically Woohyun speak for ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself.’ Victory.

When Woohyun is walking over, Sungyeol tries to see if he can discern any signs of latent pining or whatever. But he doesn’t seem any different than he ever does.

Unless… _What if this has been going on for ages and I never noticed?_ He’s not sure which option is worse. Woohyun crosses his arms as he comes to a stop on the other side of the counter. “Okay, you have my attention. Count yourself blessed. Now don’t waste it.” Sungyeol was never one for beating around the bush anyway.

“Are you...” he begins, leaning forward and down a little to meet Woohyun’s eye-line, “in love with me?”

Sungyeol’s not entirely sure what he expected Woohyun’s response to be - a sudden dramatic confession in the middle of the café at their work maybe? But regardless of his expectation, what he gets is a befuddled expression, a snort, and then the sight of Woohyun walking away from him back to the bookstore. “So, is that a no then?” Sungyeol calls after him, this time not getting a response at all.

  
  
  


The only thing to do, Sungyeol reasons, is to continue his investigations further in the future. He explains the situation and his plan to Myungsoo one night after work. “How is going further into the future going to help you figure out what was happening in the… less… future… future?” Myungsoo asks. He’s not even looking at Sungyeol when he does, just absently petting one of their three cats. “Wouldn’t it be better to go a shorter time forward and try to sort out when things changed?” Sungyeol stops pacing their living room to stare at Myungsoo. Admittedly, that does make more sense, dammit. But it also sounds less fun, and Sungyeol still wants to see how far he can time travel. 

Which is what he could tell Myungsoo, as a means of effectively reasoning away his logic, but instead, Sungyeol just says, “Don’t be ridiculous. I have this totally under control.”

  
  
  
He does not have this under control. And all Sungyeol can think about when he gets himself in this ridiculous situation is that he is beyond thrilled he hasn’t tried to bring Myungsoo with him on one of these time travel excursions.

This time he’s not even positive how far into the future he’s gone, but Sungyeol finds himself trying desperately not to run into his future-self, as they’ve ended up in the same place at the same time. Honestly, this isn’t that surprising because there aren’t many places that Sungyeol goes, so it was bound to happen eventually. He makes a promise to himself to start finding new places to hang out.

What makes matters worse is that not only is another Sungyeol wandering around, but Woohyun is here, too. He can’t have seen each of the Sungyeols more than once so far but he already looks suspicious the next time Sungyeol runs into him. Sungyeol just smiles and waves and tries to find a place to hide out and send himself back to his present, but they’re all in a relatively small bar so it’s not the easiest task. Just as he thinks he’s managed it, Woohyun’s head peers around the corner and spots him.

“Didn’t I just... see you... at the bar?”

“Am I not allowed to walk around now?”

“Okay sure, but I mean I saw you there, walked over to the bathroom, and saw you here. And I’m pretty sure you weren’t wearing that.” Dammit.

“So... fine. There’s two me’s here right now. It happens.” Sungyeol expects Woohyun to question this simple answer, or at least argue with him that it’s impossible for there to be two of him in the same place, but neither of these things happen. Woohyun’s gaze sort of drifts away from Sungyeol’s face, his eyes glazing over. His expression isn’t particularly clear, and Sungyeol tilts his head to squint at him before Woohyun speaks again.

“If there’s two of you... does that mean... what are the chances all three of us could...?”

“Whatever you’re thinking, Nam, the answer is no.” Sungyeol shoves past the still slightly dazed Woohyun and into the bathroom, locking himself in one of the stalls. 

”You didn’t even hear the question!”

”It’s still a no!”

  
  
  


“So, what have you learned from all this?” Myungsoo asks Sungyeol several nights and assorted more trips into varied futures later. And Sungyeol is at a loss. He doesn’t think that every point in time he’s seen is necessarily connected - some things have contradicted enough to make that impossible - but there is a unifying factor in every version of reality. “I know the answer already, but I want you to go ahead and say it.” Sungyeol pouts.

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to at least have thought about it by now.” Which, obviously. That doesn’t mean Sungyeol has to be happy about it. Actually, he’s thought about this _a lot_ , and he’s thought about his feelings _a lot_ , and everything is just terrible, really. He lets out a dramatic disgruntled noise and flops over on their couch.

Myungsoo smiles his stupid Myungsoo smile and pats Sungyeol on the head as he walks by on his way to the kitchen. “There there, there are worse things. Worse people.”

  
  
  


Sungyeol stomps across the room, loudly and semi-dramatically, but not caring that he's being a spectacle. There are a few customers watching him with curiosity and/or confusion, but he's too focused on his goal to notice. Maybe because Woohyun is used to Sungyeol being ridiculous, he doesn't turn around from shelving though he must hear Sungyeol coming. "Yah, Nam Woohyun." Sungyeol spins him around by the shoulder and pulls Woohyun's face to his. Well, it's more like half-pulling, half him leaning down because wow, Woohyun is short. 

The kiss is quick, not particularly skillful, and Sungyeol shoves Woohyun away immediately after. He scans Woohyun's face for a reaction, but all he gets is a sort of scrunched up look of concentration. "I know I'm unbearably alluring, but was that entirely necessary?" Woohyun asks, the thinking face gone, a smug expression replacing it. "We are at work, you know. You could jump me at a more appropriate time, if you must."

"No. I'm tired of other times; it always seems to be you anyway." Woohyun’s eyes go bug-eyed for a second and Sungyeol immediately regrets that sentence.

“That, is the cutest thing I have have _ever heard_ , oh my god.” He looks like he’s about to start sparkling or something, and this is not at all what Sungyeol wants. “It’s just like a movie...”

“Okay, no. I take it back.”

“What? You can’t do that. It’s too late - you said it, I heard you.”

What was he thinking? Okay, he wasn’t thinking; Sungyeol’s mouth just sort of sped past his brain and the words spilled out before he could stop them and now he has to deal with this. In the most mature, adult way imaginable. “I hate you, you suck.”

“You can’t toy with my emotions like this, Lee Sungyeol! And you don’t hate me.”

“I do, you don’t know me.”

“I know you just smooched me. In the middle of our place of employment.”

“Shut up, Woohyun.”

That stupid, obnoxious Woohyun Smirk ™ is plastered across his face again and the traitorous part of Sungyeol’s brain thinks it’s cute. He is trying very hard to shut that part up again. “Sungjong saw it, too,” Woohyun says, before leaning around Sungyeol to yell in the direction of the café, “DIDN’T YOU SUNGJONGIE?” Sungyeol spins around just in time to see Sungjong sigh and roll his eyes, before giving the most put-upon nod a person can muster.

“Traitor!” Sungyeol yells, shaking his fist. And to think he thought these people were his friends. “I’m quitting this job, you’re all terrible people I can’t take it anymore.” Woohyun is laughing now, and Sungyeol is ready to walk out of the store because there’s only so much embarrassment a person can handle and right now is pretty close to his limit. If there were any more customers around, he might spontaneously combust on the spot. 

He starts to take a step away, but then Woohyun’s hand is on his arm. “Idiot.” He’s spun back around and the look Woohyun is giving him is definitely one Sungyeol’s never seen before. At least, not directed toward him. It’s the sort of expression he’d been looking for earlier, after his first or second trip to the future. No smirk, no guardedness or distance - this might be one of the few genuine looks he’s ever seen on Woohyun’s face. Before Sungyeol has the chance to overanalyze the situation any further, Woohyun tugs down on his wrist, effectively pulling the rest of Sungyeol along with it. 

When their lips collide this time, Sungyeol can feel Woohyun smiling. And suddenly he finds himself wishing his pocket watch could slow time down instead of send him through it.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually started writing this probably over a year ago? Because I really liked the idea, but couldn't figure out how to get to the end I wanted. But then I finished it earlier this year. And never posted it, because I suck. So now I've edited it and here it is!


End file.
